The top image is my great grandfather John Cummings(also known as 'Commings' in Ireland) citizenship papers. This copy was requested by his wife Catherine in 1920. John and Catherine Cummings were parents to Catherine, Charles, Mary and Cecelia (also known as Celia and Claire).
I am not sure who the man in the second photo is. He is definately a Cummings (or Cummings related) My town's local historian (Henry Cooke-Randolph, MA) designs period costumes for movies and such and I am hoping he will be able to tell me more about the hat in this photo. I am wondering if the man was a trolley conductor or something like that.
Once I find out what he did, I should be able to determine who he was.

Update:
My Mother's cousin informs me that this is my Mother's Grandfather who came to Boston from Ireland, married and had a few children and then abandoned his family to return to Ireland. He was a streetcar conductor, hence, the hat.
Have I mentioned lately how much I love the internet? : )

These are a couple from an assortment of many pictures that Charles and Catherine McIntyre took on their trip to Ireland in 1974.
The first was taken on the Cliffs of Moher and the second was taken outside a tea shop in or near Kerry.
I went on a tour that visited the same cliffs in 2005 or 2006 and I can say with much confidence, it's a miracle that this smiling threesome were not immediately swept out to sea. They are standing very close to the edge.
When I visited there were tons of signs warning against getting too close to the edge but they didn't help a woman who was swept off the cliffs by a hard gust of wind the day after we were there.

This was a fun picture to find. I was digging through a big box of pictures with my Mother and asked her who this guy was in the middle of my great aunt and her friends.

I didn't recognise him at all.

She took the picture from me, looked at it and passed it back. \

"Rocky Marciano."

"Get out!" says me. "Rocky Marciano? How do you know that?!?"

( It wasn't like he was a frequent guest at Sunday dinner or anything... )

Slueth that I am I had neglected to look at the back of the photo.

*Doh!*

My great aunt Catherine (Kay) Cummings-McIntyre is on the right in this photo, her friend Doria is on the left of Mr. Marciano, I'm not sure who the woman in the front is.

Let us begin...

I have paternal relatives that have done extensive geneology research and thier stories and photos got me wondering about my maternal line.

Unfortunately, my family on the Cummings/McIntyre side is very small and no immediate relatives that I know of have had any intrest in researching the family past.

It seems to me that a lot of Irish imigrant families had a habit of leaving more than thier immediate relatives in Ireland when they came to America, a lot of them seem to have left behind a lot of thier past.

Perhaps that is why many Irish families were so successful in thier immigration and prolific once they arrived, perhaps for the valuble ability to blend and assimilate, something had to be sacrificed.

Or perhaps that's just my family...

About 2 years ago I started working at the bookstore with Bill West ( http://westinnewengland.blogspot.com/ ) who has a really great geneology blog and lunch room discussions with him got me thinking,

"I'd love to just stumble across something like that for my family..."

Conversations with another friend with an intrest in geneolgy and an Ancestry.com account got me really digging and one day my friend Elizabeth emailed me and told me a McIntyre had contacted her through Ancestry.com and would I like her phone #.

Whould I?!?

I wound up speaking with a total stranger, Donna, on the phone for an hour and a half and learned more from her than I ever could have gotten from my own relatives about where we came from.

About 2 years ago we cleaned out the family house that my McIntyre great grandparents had built in Roslindale, MA about 1915. Much to my surprise, the attic, basement, cedar chests and every cabinet and closet was filled to the brim with pictures.

For a family that did not seem to care much for it's past, they sure did one heck of a job documenting thier present.

My idea for this blog is to use what I have, the pictures, to document what I can in the hopes that I can create the sort of blog that I would love to have stumbled on in my own search.

So where am I going with this?

Who knows?

Let's just wait and see what develops....

Hope you enjoy these pictures as much as I do!

: )

-Laura